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However I seem to get my butt whipped by f**king hordes of the little HE critters swarming over the planets I was trying to remote mine like a dirty plague spreading accross the stars!

A scout hull with red (or better) laser and a battleboard speed of 1 is normally sufficient to knock off those pesky mini-colonisers. Sometimes the mini-coloniser will get lucky and evade destruction, but rarely twice in a row.
You might want to warn your neighbour that their colonisers heading towards your territory will be indiscriminently shot down. It's often enough to deter an opportunist from sneaking into your space.

If they send better warships to deal with your armed scouts then you probably would have had to face them at some point and against most HE designs you will probably have an early game advantage.

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[Updated on: Tue, 03 August 2004 12:13]

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[Updated on: Sun, 26 September 2004 01:35]

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Math comparing factory growth from germ kickstart to regular { If 10 factories produce 15 resources and 10 factories cost 60 resources, then growth is 15/60 or 25% If 10 factories + 10 mines produce 15 resources and 10 factories + 10 mines cost 90 resources then growth is 15/90 or 16.7% }

Not sure that I see your point here.
No one sets their mines to cost 9 (10 mines = 90)
It just wouldn't be worthwhile!

You typically want your mines to cost 3 (10 mines = 30), so that when you need them they'll be very quick and easy to build.

I'll accept that someone might want them to cost 4 or perhaps even 5 depending on the situation, but not 9 !!!

Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant???

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Breakpoint techs: Mk IV and Flux caps are nice.

Very nice indeed, the only trouble being that by this stage your opponents at the very least have Jihad's. Juggers are almost viable if not available by this stage.
It's great to be able to attack your opponent with BB's and Flux Caps, but against Jihads/Juggers they cost less and fair very badly. Chaff at this stage is still a bit expensive and since we're talking about a HE race ...... umm well it has no gates, so chaff isn't as readily available.
The fact that you chose Energy cheap won't help you too much either, as missiles that miss their target often take it out on the armour anyway. Once the shields are all gone (which wouldn't take long) the missiles do double damage to your armour. At this stage your ships aren't fast enough and due to the greater range of my missile BB's I'm taking out some of your BB's "before" your chaff (which cost you a fair bit to start with anyway). My battle orders are minimise damage (in many cases), so it takes a few rounds before you even get within range. If you don't yet have the Overthruster (prop12), well you are in big trouble.

To be honest I love attacking HE, even if they have an ally with gates. You know full well that they can't gate their chaff or warships to their own planets. It's almost a paradise, in fact HE is my second most preferred victim to AR
Where's my mate Zoider?

Pesonally I don't consider lasers viable again (past weap10) until Weap20. Now that's a decent laser and you at least have some chance of doing sufficient damage.
There's always exceptions of course and to be honest the Flux caps can significantly change the outcome of a battle, but can you get enough ships to the focal point in time to make a difference?

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And with 25% rule i cannot see any difference whether you have 1 planet with 25% or 5 with 5% in growth and facs operated as long as pop eff is 1/1000 or better, so why shouldn't i grow HW to 25% it its good in mins?

I can see both sides of that argument and they are each certainly valid. It just depends on the situation.

Personally I prefer in most situations to grow my HW to at least 25% for three reasons
a) The minimum 30% HW mineral concentration is a significant factor.

b) If you want to attack or are attacked by another race early, then it's your HW that will make the significant difference.
It's great to have 10-20 worlds before anyone else, but if only your HW has a starbase and as a consequence of growing on too many worlds, only has a pop of 100k, how do you expect to perform against a race with 300k on their HW?
You may have more pop overall and the same resources, but if you lose your HW it "might be" the end of you.

c) The compounding factor in factory/mine building can make all the difference. It's true that in a 3i race your pop can grow on any planet just as well as another and yes some planets will give you better mineral output than your HW, but the initial starting Facs/mines on your HW are what gives you the strength to defend against an early attack or be the aggressor in the initial years.

Use that to your advantage and you could become a powerhouse. Then again if you're left alone for long enough, then taking the higher concentration mineral planets will help you immensely.
The main problem wit

[Updated on: Mon, 27 September 2004 03:23] by Moderator

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Quote:

10 factories cost 60 resources and 10 mines cost 30 resources = 90 resources. Without germ kickstart, assuming need around as many mines as factories for factory growth. Assuming a quick start design where factories cost 6 and mines cost 3.

Ah, now I get what you meant.
Anyhow, those are expensive choices that could perhaps be better spent elsewhere.

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Gateless HE fights different. I call those border colonies I can't defend sacrifical lambs.

Excellent, that's free colonies for me!!!

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The enemy attacking them has less ships to defend himself.

How do you figure?
Whilst my ships are mostly gateable (by the nub stage all my ships are gateable except bombers and overcloakers) you have no gates, so your ships are travelling whilst mine are doing!!!
Anyhow, even if they're not gateable, many are still overgateable so a small percentage will die whilst others kick butt.

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Goal is to keep enemy fleet away from his gates as long as possible, HE has twice as many colonies each worth half as much so can afford to lose a few (grow others to replace easy enough).

Umm yes, HE has twice as many colonies provided that his opponents are stupid. If a HE says to me that he wants some of my space due to his racial trait being inadequate, then I tell him to look elsewhere. Probably his other neighbours do too.
I know, why don't we tell the HE race to ally with a 1WW. A really good match there and easy meat for a neighboring QS

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[Updated on: Mon, 27 September 2004 09:58]

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multilis wrote on Mon, 27 September 2004 16:56

The game plan isn't wimpy colonies but use the pop to kickstart the factories then move some of pop onward while the factories build more factories.

I second multilis here. HE cant go with 3-4 planets these are too easy to siege. HE cant go with spore rain, these deliver too wimpy colonies. So the answer is inbetween.

Lot of relatively little but not too wimpy colonies is the way to go for low growth HE. 30-40 factories can deliver a dock... no pop drop anymore. Few DD-FF? They die. So they use bigger force and get it down and pop-drop? Ohh real tragedy indeed! Half privateer of pop and 30 factories gone. Check the size of their investment.

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Kotk wrote on Mon, 27 September 2004 09:48

I second multilis here. HE cant go with 3-4 planets these are too easy to siege. HE cant go with spore rain, these deliver too wimpy colonies. So the answer is inbetween.

The best way I have found is to hold your HW at 137,500 and move the the excess to the next "best" world. "Best" can mean many things, but the factors I take into consideration, in about this order, are:

1. Location (1 jump away from the HW, if possible)
2. Strategic placement (is there another prime world <81 ly away?)
2. Min conc
3. Planet conc
4. Neighbor proximity

Once you build up the second planet to 137,500, you start dumping on the next world "out" from your HW. Your pop from your HW is then sent to the next viable planet 1 hop from your HW.

You can still colonize other planets, and in fact it is to your advantage to do this. Not only can you gain valuable tech early from colonization, but you stake your claim to those worlds. Many players will not dispute it. True, you can be popdropped, but that's part of playing a low growth race.

In this manner, you will maximize your pop growth, plus you will have planets that are fully factoried and ready to develop tech or build ships.

Once you hit 137,500 on all the planets in the interior, just let them grow to 250,000, to get full def. They will still produce about the same amount of colonists at that point. Hold at that level, and use the excess to start filling up worlds to 550,000 one by one.

You should never try to move pop more than 1 hop away until later, past Y2465 if possible.

With my 4% HE, I can hit 12K @ Y50 in an optimal universe. Seems low, but it is a pop limitation, so you usually end up with the tech lead, more mins than anyone else, plus the ability of building factories before your ships and still produce the same amount, as if you were just building ships.

I'm totally happy if I can carve out a 35 planet niche in a Huge game, for the first 50 years. On the map it looks very tiny, and most races have better targets, as they are all fighting for similar habs. Last Huge I played, I was able to grab ~45 planets, interspersing a bit. I negotiated my way out of a couple disputes. Let another player pop drop me in a couple of planets with no retribution. Actually have one neighbor tell me that he would've attacked me early, but I only owned a couple planets that he liked, and didn't think a war would be 'worth' it...Heh, he regretted that decision.

Quote:

Lot of relatively little but not too wimpy colonies is the way to go for low growth HE. 30-40 factories can deliver a dock... no pop drop anymore.

Not correct. They are still quite vulnerable. All you have to do is kill the dock, and you are basically dead on a popdrop. I will agree that it is the best way to grow...in a testbed. In a real game, though, you may need the additional colonists to control def to add deterent. Small colonies with ~25% def is not a problem to popdrop for most races.

Quote:

Few DD-FF? They die. So they use bigger force and get it down and pop-drop? Ohh real tragedy indeed! Half privateer of pop and 30 factories gone. Check the size of their investment.

Their investment is very small, compared to your loss. Even a few thousand can make a big difference later in the game, while a HG can lose hundreds of thousands. Plus, a high growth would make those losses back, by taking your planet. A -f would laugh.

-Matt

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[Updated on: Mon, 27 September 2004 22:46]

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Okay i add some figures here just to be sure that we are talking of same thing.

First... econ @ 2450:
Tech: All designed to have about same tech as 4% HE.
Resources: 4% HE gets ~13K, 5% HE gets ~27K, 6% HE gets ~35K.
Minerals: 5% HE has best minerals, 4% is at second place, 6% has worst minerals.

For me it seems that 4% HE lacks the econ to build warships so i dont know why Matt use that thing? At 2435 it has 5-6 colonies at 25% hold 600 res each and rest are just spored places? If neighbour JOAT who decides that HE is not needed has 5-6 colonies at 1K at same time then wtf such tiny guy can do but die?

As for 5% HE ... it can have about 40 docks at 2435. Its not easy to stomp it at once. It starts growing quite OK after 2440 and ~50 planets hit 25%-30% at 2450.

Now when we talk of 6% HE... or 7% 2-immune... These grow like mad so it feels that its own pop-lifting is problem, nothing to talk about being pop-dropped.

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[Updated on: Tue, 28 September 2004 17:40] by Moderator

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